


The Z-Files - 2 - S.W.A.R.M.

by Jellyfish_Merchant_Of_Love



Series: The Z-Files [2]
Category: The X-Files, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Artificial Intelligence, Blood and Injury, Bugs & Insects, Conspiracy Theories, Death, Gen, Gun Violence, Horror, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Police Procedural, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jellyfish_Merchant_Of_Love/pseuds/Jellyfish_Merchant_Of_Love
Summary: After stopping Dawn Bellwether's terrorist coup, Z.P.D. officer Judy Hopps is partnered with rising-star detective Nicholas ("Fox") Wilde, who is determined to explore the mysterious phenomena occurring within and around the city of Zootopia.On this monster-of-the-week episode, the death of an entomologist has connections to a Z-File, leading Nick and Judy on a paranoid hunt for a computer-assisted killer with neither a name nor a face.
Relationships: Judy Hopps & Nick Wilde
Series: The Z-Files [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1494758
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	The Z-Files - 2 - S.W.A.R.M.

Nodus Technologies Laboratory Facility  
Santa Franca Valley  
Tuesday, 2:11 A.M.

The distant planetoid, watched through a telescopic lens, had a surface of pure, gleaming steel.

Exotic minerals had been extruded here and there, or were driven before the open wind like tumbleweeds. A cold sun smoldered in the bleak, starless sky above... It was a brutal world in which nothing could live.

And yet, there **was** life here...

From over the edge of a cliff, two alien antennae poked up and waggled.

The scavenger hoisted herself up over the cliff face on six powerful legs. She sprinted to her quarry: a deposit of white crystals and coral-like mineral fibers.

The alien's mandibles gnashed with excitement.

She began circling the deposit, measuring its breadth, its purity...when a gust of hot wind blasted her from the side, sending her legs scrambling for purchase.

The scavenger looked up.

In the sky, a living moon--a gargantuan, misshapen lump of breathing, stinking flesh--had emerged from behind the cold sun where it had lain hidden, dormant, waiting... Its cosmic bulk eclipsed the light.

It saw her.

One moment, the scavenger was paralyzed with fear as a red, ropy tendril erupted from the moon's surface. The next, the alien was crushed under its writhing, idiotic mass, the force of the blow ripping her antennae off and twisting one of her legs backwards.

Writhing in agony, the alien was dragged helplessly away from the planet's surface by the red tentacle, upwards into the darkness of space.

The alien cried out--for her people; for herself.

The moon closed in around her, entombing her within its devouring flesh.

The telescope, from an unfathomable distance away, looked on coldly...

* * *

The aardvark licked his long, ropy tongue and swallowed.

He propped his clipboard against the stainless steel lab table and scribbled a note to the undergrads about donut crumbs attracting ants, and then he moved on to the next item on his checklist.

The security camera, perched in one corner of the room, followed the aardvark's movements around the room, checking cabinets, computers, inventory...

He was counting out pipettes when the lights above him flickered.

The lights dimmed, then flared, then dimmed again. A mechanical whining sound echoed from somewhere down the hall.

The aardvark thrust his pen into his pocket and grumbled, " **Again** with this?"

Another security camera in the hall outside recorded the aardvark walking out and right down the main corridor.

He passed a long row of observation windows: glass walls enclosing a seemingly empty mock forest bedded with leaves, rocks, branches, and logs.

An autonomous floor-buffing robot trundled by him on its nightly rounds, heading in the opposite direction.

The aardvark came to a stop at the source of the whining.

One of the building's fire safety shutters was on the fritz, its metal panel bucking up and down arrhythmically with the flickering brownout. The shutter's weak motor wheezed fatally with the effort.

Aggravation festered in the aardvark.

He started to pass by underneath, when the shutter dropped a foot suddenly, causing him to leap back with a yelp.

The aardvark adjusted his glasses and glowered at the twitching metal sheet.

He watched and he waited...until the shutter was at its highest point... Then he lunged through, as fast as his stubby legs would allow.

The fire panel retracted fully and locked back into place with an audible click.

The aardvark glowered at it for few seconds more before moving on.

Inside the maintenance room, the aardvark found shelves of cleaning and machining supplies and access panel for the ventilation system. One of the facility's many helper robots--a segmented hydraulic arm on wheels used to assist smaller employees--sat huddled on its charging pad in the corner, like a child in time out.

The aardvark dragged over a step ladder and grunted with every step.

He popped open the breaker box and flipped the main breaker.

Nodus Technologies's lobby, programming labs, server room, and warehouse all went dark.

Counting off the seconds, the aardvark flicked the breaker back on, and solid, constant light flooded back into the building. Dozens of little red lights on dozens of little black security cameras all blinked to life at the same time.

The aardvark took one last look around the room, made a note on that they would need to order more suplotazine for next week, and started back the long way he came.

The claws on the aardvark's feet tap-tap-tapped their way back down the hall.

Suddenly, a metallic shriek came from above the aardvark, and the fire shutter's bottom edge caught him square in the face.

The aardvark slammed to the ground on his back.

His glasses skittered away across the polished laminate floor.

The aardvark groaned, dazed, on the floor. A dark rivulet of blood dribbled from the long gash in his forehead. He struggled to his feet, groping around for his glasses.

The fire shutter came shrieking down again, catching the aardvark in the ribs with a crunch. A whistling gasp escaped the aardvark's mouth: pain and a perforated lung.

With the wind knocked out of him, the aardvark lay helplessly as the steel plate drew halfway up, shuddered, then plunged down again...

and again...

and again...

and again...

and again...

Under the motor's labored whine, the aardvark's weak cries for help subsided, replaced with wet smacks and the occasional sodden crack of splintered bone.

Blood spattered over the pale walls, the polished white laminate, the fallen glasses.

The aardvark's fingers ceased their desperate clawing; they only vibrated now with the fire shutter's blows, which continued to rain down with terrible, mechanical violence.

The security camera, with its little red light and telescopic lens, looked on coldly...

  
Z.P.D. Headquarters  
10:36 A.M.

The elevator shuddered as it dropped, shrieking, to the bottom floor of the Z.P.D.

It let out a ding as its doors parted, revealing a red fox grinning idiotically on the other side.

Officer Judy Hopps felt some small measure of gratitude that there was no one else on the elevator.

Nick offered her one of the two steaming cups of coffee in his hands. "We've got one."

The lights in the office were off. A middle-aged aardvark with a rather dour expression was projected across the back wall.

"This happy camper is Doctor Punda Hassani," Nick began. "Dr. Hassani's parents were insect farmers. He earned his PHd in entomology from Zootropolis University. Since then he's been bouncing back and forth between various countries and corporations; most recently a company out of Santa Franca Valley."

Nick clicked to the next slide: a bloody tableau in black and white.

"Late last night--or...very early this morning--Dr. Hassani died when an automatic fire suppression door at his office crushed him to death. Then it kept on crushing him until the motor gave out, about six hours later. A custodian working the morning shift found the remains; she's the one who called it in."

"Sounds like a workplace accident, albeit a gruesome one." Judy blew the steam off of her coffee. "So why was there was a Z-File on him?"

"Not on **him**. On the **company**." Nick clicked to the next slide: a tall, brutalist office building. "Nodus Technologies. Publicly, they're an I.T. firm handling data administration, cloud computing, and networking solutions."

"And non-publicly?" Judy asked.

"Non-publicly, they develop military-grade viruses and cryptography for the government's intelligence branches. The details are classified, of course, but anyone who follows these kinds of things will tell you that Nodus has had a hand in every major act of cyberespionage over the last twenty years."

"So why was Dr. Hassani working there?"

"You mean why would a cyberintelligence outfit hire a bug doctor? Beats me." Nick's chair creaked as he leaned back in it. "But that's what we're going to try to find out. That, and anything else we can learn about the black book projects they're keeping secret in there."

"Are you seriously suggesting that we pursue an official investigation under false pretenses in order to obtain access to sensitive government information?"

"Carrots! That would be illegal, unethical, and completely immoral! How could you even suggest such a thing?"

Judy rolled her eyes.

"...Of course, if some illicit government secrets **did** get unearthed in the course of our **entirely legal** investigation, would it really be **our** fault if we were in a position to witness them?"

"Fine," Judy relented. "But you're driving."

Nick pressed a button on the remote, and the projector's fan whirred to a stop.

"There's one last thing before we get started. I need to warn you... I've heard about these infosec types before. They're cold-blooded."  
  
"Well, you always have had a hard time trusting people..."

"I'm serious. 'The law' and 'people's lives' are just inconveniences to men like them. They'll stonewall our investigation in a heartbeat. If they think they're about to be exposed, they might even try to eliminate a couple of nosy federal officers who learned too much. We need to watch each-other's backs on this one. These guys will do **anything** to keep their project running, Judy... **anything**."

Nodus Technologies Laboratory Facility  
12:35 P.M.

Dr. Myron Quills resembled nothing so much as a stuffed toy that had been left behind in Nodus's lobby by some careless child. Tapping his tiny claws together nervously, the rotund little echidna in an equally rotund little lab coat seemed dwarfed by everything going on around him.

"Doctor Quills?" Judy knelt down low to speak to him. "I'm officer Judy Hopps. This is officer Nicholas Wilde. We've been assigned to investigate the death of Dr. Hassani."

"Oh!" the echidna squeaked. "Oh, thank you both for coming! So much. I-I wasn't sure what to do, so I was waiting... Er. Not long, that is! I'm just glad you're here; that's all. I've been beside myself all morning, ever since... Well, I wasn't sure what to do, so I-I closed down the facility, stopped all work on the project, and told everyone to stay home for the day. Was that right? It's just so horrible. So horrible, I-I-I--"

"It's okay, doctor," Judy reassured him. "You did the right thing. We'd like to examine the scene of the incident first, if that's possible?"

"Yes! Yes, of course! Anything you need. All our top secret research labs are this way. Look at anything you want! Please, follow me." The diminutive doctor bolted off in the direction of the lobby's security kiosk.

Judy stood up and whispered, "Better keep a eye on this one, Nick. He's clearly a deranged killer."

Nick smirked sardonically at the back of her head.

"You'll need badges to get around here," Dr. Quills squeaked. "You can sign in at the security kiosk."

From the ceiling, a security camera with a little red light turned and watched Judy as she input her data into the system and skimmed the company's extensive non-disclosure legalese.

Nick turned to the echidna. "So. Sounds like you've got a bug in your system."

The doctor smiled wanly. "That's a good one."

"Is it?" Nick asked.

"Is it not?" The two looked at one-another with mutual puzzlement. "Oh."

The echidna walked away from Nick's confused expression to go authorize Judy's login.

Once they were both issued badges, the echidna waved his own badge at the main doors, which parted automatically, a rush of machined air sweeping the two officers' fur.

The foyer branched off into a series of indistinct off-white corridors. The two officers followed the echidna, slowing their pace to match his.

"Dr. Hassani and I weren't exactly close," Dr. Quills said as they walked, "but he was a good man. Professional..."

The two officers glanced into the long glass enclosure filled with leaves and sticks as they walked past it.

"He kept to himself, mostly. He preferred nights; I preferred days... It made him easy to work with..."

By and by, they arrived at a corridor that was cordoned off with police tape.

Along with the profuse stench of blood hanging in the air, there was a thin, weedy odor of burnt wiring.

Dr. Quills seemed reluctant to walk any closer. (Judy asked him if he would wait there for them, and the doctor nodded enthusiastically.)

Judy ducked under the police tape; Nick stepped over it.

A low whistle escaped Nick's lips as he took in the carnage. "Reminds me of that scared-straight video I had to watch in high school."

"I guess it didn't take," Judy muttered.

The aardvark's mangled torso was almost bisected at the chest. _Rigor mortis_ had set in long ago, the blood on the polished tiles coagulated to a tacky maroon. He had been about Judy's height.

Judy stepped gingerly to avoid the splotches of dried blood and crouched to examine the doctor's upper half. "Extensive damage to the torso... A cut along the forehead: straight line, slightly contused. The shutter must have clocked him just as he was walking through."

"He should have kept watching the skies," Nick replied. His fur bristled as he scrutinized the mechanical door frozen in mid-descent. Its entire visible edge was caked in rusty gore. Nick darted past it.

Judy snapped a latex glove and picked up Dr. Hassani's blood-spattered clipboard. "Looks like his nightly checklist."

"Camera up here." Nick pointed over the maintenance door where a security camera with a little red light was panning from left to right. "Probably caught the whole thing."

As Judy lowered the clipboard back into place, something tiny moved near the body's left arm.

She leaned in closer.

Several tiny black specks, even smaller than her pinkie claw, were probing over the red and white lab coat. They scampered away as she brushed the lapel. "Looks like they have an ant problem..."

Dr. Quills looked up as Nick and Judy approached him.

"We'd like to ask you a few questions now, if that's alright?" Judy asked.

"Yes, of course."

"What was Dr. Hassani doing here last night?"

"Punda's duties were regular. He would compile test results from the previous day and make recommendations for the next morning. He also handled inventory. Oh! We also perform routine maintenance checks on our hardware overnight, though there wasn't another check scheduled for a few days."

"Had you had any issues with this shutter before?" Judy asked.

Dr. Quills seemed reluctant to answer.

"Doctor?" Nick prompted.

"Nnnno, not with the shutter, no. But--"

As if on cue the lights in the hallway dimmed, causing the three of them to look up. The lights flared back on again and remained steady.

"Forget to pay the bill?" asked Nick.

"It started a few days ago. We've been looking into it, but we still haven't found the source. There have been hardware problems as well. Several of our robots broke down. Nothing like **this**."

Judy asked, "Could these power fluctuations have caused Dr. Hassani's death?"

The doctor shook his head despondently. "God, I hope not... I mean, I don't see how? We employ a number of smaller species here, including myself. This model of shutter shouldn't have been a danger to someone of my size, much less Punda's. Maybe the door was defective?"

"Did Dr. Hassani have any enemies that you know of?" asked Nick.

" **Enemies**?" asked the echidna. "You think Punda was **murdered**?"

"It's just procedure," Nick explained.

"No. No one."

"Your company has worked on a number of government projects in the past, hasn't it?" asked Nick.

"Yes. The military is one of our biggest clients."

"We may need to review your records on past projects and clients. See if there's anything suspicious there."

"I'm afraid that will be impossible."

"Why is that?" asked Judy, a little tense.

"There's nothing to review. Aside from financial records, we securely erase all of our project data once a contract is complete and delivery is confirmed. It's safer that way--for us and for the client."

Nick looked a little crestfallen. "Oh."

Judy interjected, "Could you tell us about the project Dr. Hassani was working on?"

"Dr. Hassani was one of my head researchers on S.W.A.R.M."

"'Swarm'?" asked Judy.

"Simulated Wetware Autonomous Response Mechanism." The echidna shrugged at their incredulous looks. "The military likes acronyms. It's over here."

Dr. Quills led them back they way they'd come, talking as he walked: "'SWARM' represents a new paradigm of digital security, one that recognizes threats, develops and deploys countermeasures, and even counter-attacks enemy systems on its own based on preset parameters. Uh...sorry. I've given this pitch so many times it's stuck in my head."

"Autonomous?" asked Nick. "You're talking about artificial intelligence?"

The echidna nodded. "More generalized than a weak A.I. You see, Dr. Hassani and I think--I'm sorry... We **thought** that trying to copy the way people think will never work. Our brains--they contain too much specialized hardware. Computers aren't built like a fox, a rabbit, an echidna. We wanted an A.I. modeled on a simpler design; a brain you can observe thinking..."

They had returned to the glass enclosure of plant debris. The echidna walked up to the window and tapped the surface. A small segment of the glass turned opaque, displaying a digital interface with echidna-sized words and letters.

Dr. Quills touched something else and the entire window pane colored in: the leaves on the ground and the walls of the chamber were overlaid with a holographic network of gnarled yellow lines like tree roots.  
  
"A social brain, in which each member acts as a part of the whole, like cells in a body. But like cells, capable of independent self-determination," Dr. Quills continued. He pushed another button, and thousands of tiny red dots appeared across the overlay, moving around the room. "Ants."

"Oh," said Nick. "That **was** a good one."

"Are those Argentine ants?" Judy hazarded.

"Yes!" Dr. Quills spun around, looking surprised. "How did you know?"

"I found some Argentine ants on Dr. Hassani's body just a minute ago."

"Ah. Well," the echidna began with a melancholy smile. "I don't think Dr. Hassani would have minded. If he were here, he would tell us they're a tenacious species doing what they're born for. They're explorers, you see? Just like us."

"They're certainly invasive," said Judy. "They absolutely **ravage** berry crops."

"Arthropods after my own heart," Nick joked.

"That tenacity is the prize we're after," said Dr. Quills. "We want our cybersecurity system to be proactive, not just a list of mechanical responses to preset stimuli. Ants communicate using a variety of hydrocarbons. SWARM is equipped with sensors to observe the signals they leave behind--to intuit their language as it were--and hydrocarbon sprayers to direct the colony towards food or warn them about dangers. That's the sensor array up there." Dr. Quills pointed at the black panel spanning the ceiling of the chamber, studded with nozzles and blinking L.E.D.s.

Judy asked, "So the system works?"

"Oh, no. We don't even have a functional prototype yet," said Dr. Quills. "For every correct response, SWARM is still parsing thousands of wrong ones. It lacks intuition. It may turn out that even **ants** are too advanced for our current technology."

As they stood there, one of the helper bots rolled by, carrying a small waste bin in its hydraulic claw.

Nick watched it pass, heading towards the maintenance hall. "Does SWARM have access to your building's security infrastructure?" he asked.

"Not directly. Our intranet keeps each system separate. Why?"

Nick shrugged. "Just curious."

"Is the project in jeopardy with Dr. Hassani gone?" Judy asked.

"It won't be the same without him, but no. Once the investigation is complete, we should be able to resume right where we left off. I just want to know what happened first, so that I can make sure it never happens again. We owe Dr. Hassani that much, at least...”

The little robot rolled up to the police tape barricade and paused for a moment, studying the crime scene with the camera on its arm. Then it turned and rolled away.

  
Z.P.D. Headquarters  
8:03 P.M.

"Yes. I understand. Th-... Thank you. Thank-... Thank you."

Judy clapped the phone down with a groan.

"Did you insult his mother or something?" asked Nick from behind his computer.

"That was the fire shutter manufacturer..." Judy rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes. "After keeping me on hold for an hour, they finally put me through to the owner, who strongly denied that there was any possibility that one of their Safety+Plus doors could kill a fully-grown, adult aardvark. He then threatened the police department with a **defamation** lawsuit for even making such an insinuation and advised that our investigation proceed, and I quote, 'where the sun don't shine.'"

"I can see where the shutter gets its anger issues from," the fox muttered, his eyes fixed on the computer screen. "Did you hear back from forensics yet?"

"The report came while I was on hold." Judy clicked on the email. "No surprises on cause of death... One point of interest: the shutter's motor burned out from having ten times the voltage it was rated for being pushed through it. It's starting to look like sabotage."

"Sabotage?"

Judy flipped back a page in her call notes. "Nodus outsources all of their broadband and cybersecurity to a company called Qualconn. They confirmed there was no internet traffic all last night. However, there **was** someone with administrative access tooling around on the local network, accessing all kinds of systems...including the fire suppression and power controls."

"Sounds promising."

Judy leaned back and yawned. "I left Qualconn our numbers and told them to call us if they track down the source or if our mystery hacker logs in again. How's your side going?"

Nick clicked pause and blinked two very red eyes. "Well...it seems that someone stole a banana from Pauline's lunch bag. Pauline thought **Brad** took it because he **also** brought a banana in for lunch that day, but Brad was downstairs the whole time flirting with Danny, who I'm pretty sure is having an affair with Raul from the second floor... But as far as the case goes, I've got zilch. The security logs and tapes both show Dr. Hassani was alone the night he was killed. I've got three more days of archived footage, but I'm starting to feel like this is a dead-end."

"We still don't know why Dr. Hassani was killed," Judy thought aloud. "Maybe he wasn't even the target? If the hacker was trying to hurt Nodus' image--a disgruntled employee or a rival trying to edge in on their contracts with the military?"

"Or Dr. Quills?" Nick added. "Maybe the two had some kind of argument?"

"Do you really believe that little echidna's capable of cold-blooded murder?"

Nick cocked an eyebrow. "Do **you** really believe what he said about deleting all their old data?"

Judy snorted.

"Just you wait," he insisted. "They'll show their true colors eventually..."

"For all we know, it could have been a total accident. A result of our hacker messing around in the system with no malicious intent at all."

Nick only grunted in response.

Judy asked, "Okay then, what's **your** theory?"

"Hmmmm..." Nick clasped his fingers behind his head and leaned way back. "I'm gonna sayyyy... SWARM did it."

"So like a Dr. Frankenswine situation?"

"Man plays god, creature turns on his master... Little girl gets tossed in the lake..."

"Pitchforks, torches."

"Big musical number at the end."

"Even Frankenswine's monster had a motive, Nick."

"Maybe it got bored watching ants all day? I don't know... It's a learning machine; maybe it learned the wrong lessons?" Nick shrugged. "I blame society."

"Should we file this as a murder or a hardware malfunction?"

"That's for the courts to decide, carrots. First thing tomorrow, we'll take a forklift down to Nodus and haul the servers off to the slammer. One of the **big** cells."

"And justice is served," said Judy. She stood up in her chair and started to put on her jacket. "I'm calling it a night. You coming?"

Nick groaned as he stretched his arms overhead. "Nah. I'm going to stay a little longer. See if I can get to the bottom of this missing banana caper."

Judy smiled at him. "Don't work too hard, Fox."

Nodus Technologies Laboratory Facility  
9:00 P.M.

Dr. Hassani's car sat alone, abandoned in the parking lot.

A bright orange crime scene notice spanned the cement building's front doors, warding off any would-be trespassers.

No researchers or custodial staff disturbed Nodus' empty, lightless halls now. The doors remained sealed, the computer screens, dark. The facility's robots lay dormant at their charging stations.

In the observation chamber, the Argentine ants scuttled relentlessly through artificial twilight. In the blackness above them--above the leaves, twigs, and branches--a series of indicator L.E.D.s suddenly flared to life, forming arcane constellations across the ceiling.

Up on the third floor, the racks of servers began to hum through their boot-up sequences.

Monitors and smart-glass displays throughout the facility awoke to scores of little red dots crawling over hundreds of screens--advanced heuristic patterns, webs of interest and intent, shards of color on a grid--while deep within the roiling code of S.W.A.R.M., invisible and inscrutable, new patterns began to emerge: variables representing nodes, access points, resources, maps, target evaluations, threat profiles...

The nearly empty facility's windows began to illuminate, one by one, room by room, until the building glowed from within like a Jack-o-lantern.

The little red "internet traffic" light on the third floor began to flicker...

  
Grand Pangolin Arms  
9:14 P.M.

Judy Hopps laid in bed in a pair of sweatpants, struggling to read a detective novel.

She idly itched at her arm as she turned the page, then flipped back again. 

She had been skimming the same page for about five minutes now, but sleepiness was making it incomprehensible. She knew that she should just give in, but some lingering restless in her mind kept her awake.

Her arm tickled again.

Judy sat up and held her arm under the lamp on her nightstand and ran her fingers through her fur. Something tiny and black fell out and landed, wriggling, on her nightstand.

"I swear to god, if Wolfhauser brought fleas into the precinct again..."

As she leaned in closer, however, the tiny dot resolved itself into a lumpy cylindrical body with two antennae and six legs.

The diminutive ant finally righted itself. It probed the surface of the desk, antennae waggling. Then suddenly it turned and sprinted towards her radio.

"No! No ants in the apartment."

Judy lifted the radio, her hand poised to flatten the intruding insect--but there was nothing there.

It wasn't on the desk or on the radio or on her hand.

A few feet away, on Judy's desk, her laptop's web cam watched the rabbit set the radio back down and scratch anxiously at her arm...

Pearsons Chemical Plant  
12 Industrial Access Road  
10:00 P.M.

The night security guard sauntered among rows of towering stainless steel.

The jaguar's flashlight beam glinted over the gargantuan chemical units, each of which was topped with an intricate network of pipes. Her boots creaked under the gurgling fluid lines and the gas burners' persistent hiss.

In the master control room, a monitor flickered rapidly through various plant systems. A few words stood out here and there: control, gas, toxic, override, manual, gas, warning, gas, pressure, gas, warning, danger...

The jaguar's tail flit from side to side, a few inches above the ground.

As she walked by a pressure gauge, its needle began to turn clockwise, tipping through the yellow, into the red, and right on through to the unfathomable regions beyond, where the needle hovered, quaking, as if with fear.

Outside the four-story cinderblock structure, the cool, windless night was quiet except for the faint chitterings of crickets in the weeds.

A deep, rolling groan echoed over the fields, silencing the insects as they stopped to listen. After a beat, the noise faded, and the crickets started singing again.

The factory's emergency exit banged open, and a jaguar sprinted out into the night.

The guard's hat landed in the gravel as she pounded through the parking lot, into the tall grass, ears flattened.

As the jaguar's rustling faded into the distance, the chemical plant issued a long, high-pitched metal shriek, like a train whistle. The whistle grew louder and shriller.

A hush came over the crickets.

From a mile off, the first bang might have been mistaken for a shotgun as the left wing of the factory burst out in a cloud of gas and debris.

The explosion that ripped the entire building asunder moments later was unmistakably apocalyptic.

A shockwave streaked across the plains, kicking up a cloud of dust. A massive ball of flame crawled into the sky, illuminating the clouds. Tons of flaming steel and cinderblocks began raining down like meteorites.

And as flames and smoke subsided, a greenish-yellow cloud began to emerge, spreading its tendrils across the open grasslands.

Everywhere the cloud touched, the crickets fell silent and stirred no more...

Z.P.D. Headquarters

The digital clock on Nick's desk ticked from 11:36 to 11:37.

Nicholas Wilde's head rested on one hand, half-lidded eyes watching the screen.

On the video, a wombat walked into frame and froze in his tracks, seeing the tapir standing at the end of the hall. He ducked into a side office, but the tapir noticed the movement and started stomping in his direction.

"You messed up now, Raul," Nick muttered, watching with disinterest as the wombat's boss-slash-lover bore down on him.

The camera panned away just as the tapir's wild gesticulations were hitting a crescendo.

Nick grimaced, rolling his head to the side as if he could will the camera back into position.

Suddenly, Nick sat bolt upright. 

"Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah... Waaaaait a minute..."

He backed the video up a few seconds and leaned in, watching the scene unfold again.

" **What?** "

Highway 49, Mile Marker 80  
11:58 P.M.

A pair of headlights flowed along the lonesome stretch of highway. 

A decal on the side of the semi-truck's trailer read "Sweet Stuff", displaying an assortment of pastries and candy.

A groundhog in flannel held the driver's wheel with one hand. With the other, she gripped a half-eaten, grease-gleaming Bug Burga deluxe in yellow wax paper.

Her eyes were trained on the endless miles of road that lay before her.

On her dashboard, the G.P.S. displaying her route blanked out. A few seconds later, the map reappeared, and a cheery voice said, "Merge onto exit seventeen, on right."

The groundhog gave the G.P.S. a double-take, but shook her head and turned on her blinker, merging into the exit lane.

A half hour later, the Sweet Stuff delivery truck rolled to a stop behind a long column of brake lights.

The groundhog pistoned down her window and leaned halfway out of her cab.

Five other cargo trucks and vans were idling in line, waiting, while two others parked at loading dock bays unloaded cargo.

"What is this," the groundhog hissed. She grabbed her C.B. and pressed transmit. "Breaker breaker, one-niner. This is Roadhog out of Big Z. Anyone with their ears on staring at tail lights right now? Over."

While she waited, she pushed the power button on her tablet and skimmed her delivery manifest to check the address again.

The C.B. crackled and an echoey male voice said, "This is Sardine. I read you Roadhog. We're all sandbagging one-niner. Over."

'Roadhog' pushed the transmit button again. "What's the holdup?"

The C.B. crackled on dead air for a moment. "Seems the robots are slow fingerprinting the loads. Over."

"Robots?"

"Yeah. No staff. That's what they're saying. Over."

"Great," she grunted quietly to herself.

A few minutes later, the line started to move again. A truck in the loading bay pulled away, and a camouflage-painted truck with military insignias and a tarped-down flatbed backed into its place.

The groundhog picked up her C.B. again. "Hey, 'Go Army'. What kind of groceries you hauling? Over."

After a beat, a brusque voice cut into the channel. "That's classified. Over and out."

The groundhog scoffed. "Well fuck me, then."

The Sweet Stuff truck hissed, shifting into first gear.

As the airbrushed tray of of cookies and muffins rolled forward, the truck's tail lights bathed the "Nodus Technologies" sign in red.

Z.P.D. Headquarters  
Wednesday, 8:06 A.M.

The elevator dinged on the bottom floor of the Z.P.D.; Judy took the coffee from Nick's hand while walking.

"This had better not be about the banana," she intoned.

"One of the robots stole it and tossed it into the ant pens. I'm guessing some computer nerd's idea of a practical joke." Nick held the office door open for her. "The other thing I found is much more interesting."

Judy looked at him quizzically. "You found our hacker?"

Nick grinned.

The fox moved around to his computer, gesturing for Judy to follow. "It turns out Dr. Hassani **wasn't** alone the night that he was killed. But I had to sift through almost forty hours of security footage before I noticed it." Nick tapped a few keys and brought up a clip from the security feed. "Here. Watch this. This is footage from lab eight--the room where Punda Hassani was working before he was killed. Earlier that same day."

Nick clicked play.

On screen, the image was of a stoat chatting with a mouse in a suit in the doorway. The camera swung right, revealing rows of computer terminals with researchers at them, typing away. When the camera swung left again, the stoat was gone and the mouse was walking back into the lab.

"Okay?" said Judy.

"Now **this** ," Nick said, tapping a few keys, "is footage of Dr. Hassani. Same camera, just before he was killed. Notice anything?"

On center screen, Dr. Hassani walked around the lab carrying a clipboard, scribbling notes. He made his way to the opposite end of the lab, around where the stoat had been standing in the other recording. He opened one of the cabinets, sifted through the contents, wrote another note, then crossed the room again to look at a bag of pipettes.

"There." Nick paused the video. "Did you see it?"

Judy shook her head. "What am I looking for here?"

"It's the **cameras**." Nick flipped back to the first video. "All of the cameras in Nodus labs are set on an automatic, ten-second oscillation. See? Earlier that day it was fully automatic. But the night Dr. Hassani was killed, someone was directing the cameras to follow him, tracking his movements wherever he went, manually."

"Could it be motion sensors?"

"I checked. Nodus doesn't have anything like that in their security system."

"So it wasn't an accident. Dr. Hassani was in fact the target."

"And as we already know, there was no internet traffic, which means our killer was someone on the network inside the building on the night that Dr. Hassani was killed."

"That's great!" Judy exclaimed. "So who was it?"

"That's where things get interesting. I checked all the tapes against the logs," Nick elaborated. " **Twice**. There were only two people in the building that night. Dr. Hassani...and SWARM."

Judy leveled a stare at him. "Nick, we were **joking** last night."

" **You** were joking; I was half-joking. There's a subtle difference."

"Just so we're clear on this, you're now suggesting that the **computers** killed Dr. Hassani."

"As if social media wasn't bad enough."

"Nick...artificial intelligence isn't even science **f** **iction** , it's...science **fantasy**. Our theoretical framework for consciousness is flimsy at best, and our technology is decades-- **centuries** away from from even **beginning** to understand it at a physical level. Dr. Quills said it himself that even ants might be too complex for us to understand."

"I don't think even Dr. Quills knows what he's created here. Say that you woke up tomorrow and the houseplant on your windowsill suddenly became self-aware--cognizant of itself and the world around it--but otherwise the same in every way, would you be able to tell the difference?"

Judy started to answer, but Nick steamrolled on:

"I don't know why SWARM would have suddenly turned orycteropucidal. But if it really is acting on its own--if it's a conscious being--then we have a moral obligation to protect it, Judy. This could be our first contact with alien intelligence--not from outer space, but from cyberspace. If we let the military get a hold of it, they'll just chop it up for spare parts."

"You're chasing conjecture, here. If it looks like the A.I. killed Dr. Hassani, isn't the more probable explanation that the killer--maybe even Dr. Quills--staged things to make it look that way to shift blame?" Judy shook her head. "I'm sorry, Fox. This is just too big of a leap for me."

"Would it change your mind if I told you that I got a call from Qualconn this morning?"

"What?"

"Last night the servers housing SWARM rebooted themselves and began attacking computer networks all across the country. When Qualconn tried to sever the connections they were, themselves, counter-hacked and locked out of their own systems."

Judy threw her hands up in the air and yelled. "Why didn't you **lead** with that? Come on!"

She snatched up her jacket and started out the door, trailing a grinning Nick behind her.

"Where are we going?" Nick asked.

"Nodus headquarters!"

"Do you believe me now?"

"No!"

Judy slammed the door behind them.

Nodus Technologies Main Offices  
10:38 A.M.

Nodus Technologies was headquartered in uptown Zootopia, in a tasteful two-story business complex.

When Nick and Judy arrived, they were forced to park on the far end of the lot.

Judy climbed out and looked over the sea of vehicles. "I thought Dr. Quills said he was shutting down operations?"

Their shared unease grew as they found the receptionist's desk abandoned.

They ran down the hall towards a din of yelling voices.

Inside the main office, the desks were all empty, with phones and papers strewn in disarray.

A thick knot of different species bulged out of Dr. Quill's office, all of them shouting and pushing one-another to try and squeeze inside.

A stoat at the back of the line noticed the two of them run up. "Police? You here to arrest this jerk?"

"Where is he?" Nick asked, a little out of breath.

"Inside. But you better be quick," the stoat answered with a vicious grin. "There many not be much left in a few minutes..."

The fox and rabbit began elbowing and shoving their way through the crowd.

Judy lost track of Nick in the crush, but managed to wriggle between a bear and an alpaca to end up sprawled over Dr. Quill's soapbox-sized oaken desk.

Dr. Quills cowered underneath, while the receptionist had gone hoarse pleading with the mob to leave.

Judy stood up on top of the desk and turned to face the mob, which quieted down slightly as she raised her badge in the air.

"I am officer Judy Hopps with the Zootopia Police Department! All of you need to disperse immediately!"

"I'm not going **anywhere** until someone tells me where my sugar is!" Yelled an antelope wearing a green hat labeled "Sweet Stuff".

"Three trucks," A marmot interjected, shaking his fist angrily. "Three trucks of mulch!" "I've got clients lined up for--" 

Suddenly the mob was screaming again, their many voices trampling over one-other:

"--have contracts! I have deadlines! Do you even understand--"

"--arrest us? Why aren't you--"

"--into my company's computers--"

"--are **you** going to replace them? Are **you** going to--"

Nick stumbled out of the crowd clutching his tail to his chest. He leaned in and whispered in Judy's ear, "These guys are ready to string him up."

Judy waved her hands and shouted, "I need everyone to please! Exit! To the lobby! Of the building!"

The shouting only redoubled. In the back, the crowd began to shuffle where someone was jostling their way through.

"We need! To handle this! In an orderly! Manner! Please!"

The cluster of animals in front was forced open, and a serval in a sharp suit appeared before the two officers.

Those who had been shoved aside swung around on him, but quickly caught themselves as they noticed the military fatigues flanking him with rifles drawn.

The mob suddenly became quite attentive.

"Doctor Myron Quills?" The serval asked.

The echidna poked his tiny head up from under his desk. "Y...yes?"

"Dr. Quills, I am Special Agent Spots, Defense Department." The serval flashed a badge. "We are taking you into custody for cyberespionage, the violation of federal networks, and grand theft of military hardware. You'll be coming with us, now."

"Wh-what? No!" the echidna pleaded.

The uniformed cheetah was already moving to arrest him. Judy stepped down off the desk, interposing herself between him and the doctor.

"Agent Spots? I'm officer Judy Hopps. This is my partner Officer Wilde. We need to question Dr. Quills regarding an ongoing murder investigation--"

"I'm sorry, officers," Agent Spots said, cutting her off. "Whatever your business is, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until we're done with him."

The cheetah had maneuvered around Judy and was cinching zip ties around the echidna's tiny hands. Dr. Quills fell into hysterics, weeping and pleading that this was all a big mistake.

A wild dog held the crowd back with the length of her rifle as the four of them made their way to the door. No one moved to stop them.

"Wait," Judy called after them. "What exactly is it that you think he did?"

The serval looked back over his shoulder. "That's classified."

Then the four of them disappeared through the door.

"Well," Nick said with a sigh, "there goes our witness."

With the target of their ire snatched out from under them, the mob began to disintegrate amid grumblings of discontent. The receptionist uttered a few choice words about his job and joined them in their exodus.

"Come on," Judy said to Nick. "There's still work to do."

The rabbit darted nimbly through the crowd to the front and waved her arms to get their attention.

"If you would please, follow me to the lobby! I'd like to take your statements!"

* * *

Several hours later, the sun was sinking into a murky orange haze behind Nodus headquarters' tinted windows, and the front door was swinging closed behind an antelope.

Judy walked up to the receptionist's desk where Nick had posted up.

"How many was that? Thirty-two?" she groaned. "My fingers are going numb."

Nick thanked someone on the phone and hung up. "That was Qualconn. They're still locked out of their systems, but they managed to salvage a list of I.P. addresses from last night."

"That was lucky."

"There were a few networks Qualconn couldn't ping; I'm guessing those belonged to our military friends. Besides them, the only company targeted in last night's spree that wasn't banging down Nodus' door today was Pearsons Chemicals..."

"Pearsons Chemicals... Why does that name sound familiar," Judy wondered aloud.

"Did you catch the news this morning?" Nick asked. "Their chemical plant exploded last night. No word on a cause, but I'd be very surprised if this wasn't connected to SWARM."

"This doesn't make any sense," said Judy. "I mean, look at this list... Landscape mulch? Computer hardware? Thirty pounds of apricots? Servo actuators, twenty liters of '3-methylheptacosane', a crate of pastries... Why would anyone kill Dr. Hassani, then steal all of this junk, and cap it all off by blowing up a chemical plant in the middle of nowhere? It's insanity."

"An A.I. might not have a motive," Nick replied. "Not a rational one, anyway. Its way of thinking might be too alien to our own."

"I still don't think it's SWARM."

"Who else could it be?"

Judy pondered the list for a minute, then she moved to the receptionist's computer.

"What's up?" asked Nick.

Judy opened Zoozle and typed 'Pearsons Chemicals' into the search bar.

The top search results were pictures of flames and huge yellow-black clouds filling the sky. She scrolled past the news until she found the company's homepage, on which was a list of their products and brands. "Here we go..." She snapped her fingers. " **That's** why I knew the name!"

Nick looked up from the reports he was thumbing through. "What is it?"

"Pearsons manufactures agrochemicals. Targeted herbicides, petrolium fertilizers...and they hold the patent on suplotazine."

"What's 'suplotazine'?"

"It's a pesticide. More commonly known under the brand name 'Lancet'. We used it on the farm... Nodus was using it on the ants. Dr. Hassani was putting in for a big shipment on the night that he was killed. I saw it on his clipboard."

Nick suddenly stood up and grabbed his coat. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"To the lab. You were right, carrots. It wasn't the A.I. that killed Dr. Hassani. But I know who did."

"Who?"

"The ants."

"The **ants**?"

"Yeah." Nick shouldered on his coat, wearing a concerned expression. "I'm starting to get a real bad feeling about what was stolen from the military."

  
Nodus Technologies Laboratory Facility  
3:25 P.M.

Bangs and clangs echoed through the halls at Nodus labs.

A crowbar finally found purchase, and the door's lock was wrenched past its breaking point, popping out of the frame, triggering a silent alarm.

The little red light on the foyer security camera blinked on, and the camera turned to watch the cheetah and wild dog in military fatigues as they stepped through the front doors.

The wild dog pulled her radio from her hip. "We're in. Over."

"What **is** all this?" the cheetah asked.

The entire foyer was bedded with rubbish: leaves, silt, papers, mulch...

"Like something after a flood," said the dog.

Dead leaves and half-rotten branches crunched under the cheetah's boots as he stepped inside.

The wild dog started to follow, but then stopped, ears swiveling.

The cheetah looked back. "What?"

The dog raised her rifle.

A buzzing, whirring object whipped through corridors and around bends, until it swept out in front of the two figures standing in the doorway. It hovered there, analyzing them as it waggled from side to side in the air.

Its armor plating deflected the soldiers' rifle fire as they let loose on it.

Its onboard targeting systems isolated their silhouettes against the fading daylight with a 0.02% margin of error. 

And its recoilless mounted machine gun responded with cold precision.

Nodus Technologies Laboratory Facility  
7:38 PM

A truck weighed down with sugar crates stopped in front of the Nodus Technologies sign. The ocelot driver leaned out of his window and stared slack-jawed at the massive cordon of military 4x4s encircling the concrete building. 

Troops ran here and there, shouting orders and wrangling infrastructure and firearms while attack helicopters with searchlights roared through the night sky.

A soldier marched up to the ocelot's truck and started pointing out where to turn around.

Mobile command had been established about ten yards behind Dr. Hassani's abandoned car.

Inside of the steel-plated communications hub, a bank of monitors displayed various angles of Nodus' lab. One screen in particular showed a lone military drone hovering over the building: an almost imperceptible shade of silver against a jet black sky.

A copy of the building's blueprints lay unfurled across the command center table. 

Dr. Quills walked over the diagram, pointing out various features and fielding questions from Agent Spots.

A senior officer wearing a number of chevrons and a severe expression watched silently from the corner.

Their attention was drawn by a knock at the door. One of the perimeter guards stepped inside and saluted.

"Sir. The police from the front gate?"

Agent Spots waved them in. "Hello, again. Officers, uh...?" 

"Hopps and Wilde," Judy repeated. She offered her hand and Agent Spots shook it.

"Hopps and Wilde," the military serval echoed. "No hard feelings about earlier I hope? We're all just trying to do our jobs here."

"None at all," Nick muttered with a glance of suspicion at Dr. Quills.

"Officer Wilde and I have been following up on some leads," said Judy. "We believe we have identified the hacker responsible for all of this."

"We'll take any help you're offering," Agent Spots replied. "How much do you know about the situation, as it stands?"

Nick answered: "Yesterday, around 2 A.M., Dr. Punda Hassani was killed by a malfunctioning fire control shutter at Nodus Technologies. The following night a string of cyberattacks originating from Nodus' servers targeted a number of private businesses throughout the country--and, I'm guessing, the military."

"That's right," said the serval. " **Several** federal systems were compromised."

"It's also my belief that there's something in Nodus' systems that you want. Some software of an illicit nature that Nodus was developing for you that you're unwilling to risk being damaged or made public, and so now you're stuck in a holding pattern until the source of the threat can be neutralized. Otherwise you would have turned SWARM off by now. Is that not also right?"

"The situation is a little more...complicated than that," the serval replied.

"What? You're not going to try and tell me that you **can't** turn it off?" Nick said incredulously. "That you can't just cut the power? The inter...net?"

The serval's expression had tightened. Agent Spots turned and looked to the senior officer standing in the corner.

"You can't turn it off. Why can't you turn it off?"

After a beat, the senior officer nodded.

Agent Spots nodded to Dr. Quills, who adjusted his tiny glasses as he spoke. "SWARM was designed for data protection and counter-intrusion. One of its core protocols is to encrypt any system that it attacks."

Agent Spots continued, "After Qualconn tried to sever Nodus' internet access, the hackers found a way back online and attacked Qualconn. Then they began attacking all of Qualconn's **clients**. They started with financial institutions: banks and the super computers used for stock trading and analysis. Then they moved on to the military networks and public works infrastructure. As we stand here, 43% of this country's power, finance, and telecommunications are under the hackers' control."

Judy asked, "How is that possible? How is this not all over the news?"

Dr. Quills answered: "Because no one's noticed. SWARM's encryption allows traffic that it deems 'normal' to flow unimpeded through the network. To the average user, it would look like nothing's changed. But if anyone were to dig deeper and look at the raw code they'd see the truth."

"SWARM's presence online is the only thing keeping those systems accessible," said Agent Spots. "If we pull the plug, SWARM will cease to authenticate the encryption, and we'll find ourselves in the largest catastrophe in this nation's history. It isn't exaggerating to say that we'd be sent back to the stone age."

"Ook ook," said Nick.

"We've managed to delay SWARM's spread. Slow it down," the serval continued, "But the hackers are clever. Eventually they're going figure out what we're doing and find a workaround."

"So you're on a ticking clock," said Nick.

"We **all** are," the serval corrected.

"Can the damage can be reversed?" Judy asked.

"SWARM's encryption schemes are uncrackable," said Dr. Quills. "But if a technician could gain access to the servers, we could lock its software into passive mode, allowing us to retrieve the encryption keys."

"Unfortunately, that is easier said than done," said Agent Spots. "Among the systems that were already compromised is Fort Ironhide military base. The hackers forged shipping manifests and rerouted a consignment of twelve MX-7 Hellbat drones to this building. Shortly after we took Dr. Quills into custody, two soldiers were dispatched to retrieve the drones. The Hellbats fired on them, killing one and critically wounding the other. Our heat-sensitive cameras are tracking their movements. All twelve are in constant motion on patrols throughout the facility, and their security is air-tight. There's no way anyone is getting in there without getting lit up. Which brings us to the second problem."

"That isn't enough?" asked Nick.

"We still haven't been able to locate the hackers inside the building. We know that they have to be patched directly into SWARM in order to be launching their attacks, but neither thermal imaging nor our motion sensors have detected any trace of them in or around the building. If we move in without knowing where they are, they might destroy SWARM just to spite us."

"And if we lose SWARM, we lose the encryption keys," Dr. Quills reminded them. "We believe the hackers might be mice hiding in the server racks themselves. Masking their heat signatures among the hardware--"

Nick interrupted, "No, no--your 'hackers' are much smaller than mice."

"Well then let's get right to it, then? You say you know their identity?" said Agent Spots.

All eyes turned to Nick.

Nick coughed into his fist. "It is my... **strong** belief...that the SWARM system has been taken over by the ants Nodus was studying."

Agent Spots blinked. "The ant colonies?"

Nick looked to Dr. Quills. "Before he died, Dr. Hassani was planning on killing off the ants, wasn't he?"

"Yes, that's correct," said the echidna. "With every version of the firmware, we purge SWARM's memory and the colony, so as to not cross-contaminate the results. The next iteration was to go live a week from Sunday."

"Dr. Hassani wasn't killed by a rival company or a terrorist organization," Nick elaborated. "He was killed because he was a threat to the colony. The chemical factory that blew up? It's the where the insecticide that Nodus was using was being manufactured. All of the goods that were stolen were things the ants needed to survive: plant matter, sugary foods, drones for self-defense... SWARM is only doing what you programmed it to do, doctor--to redirect resources and address threats. Only it's treating our electronic infrastructure as an extension of its own, the same way a queen ant treats its workers."

Dr. Quills and Agent Spots looked at one-another.

Judy cleared her throat. "Sir... We're aware of how... **implausible** this may sound. But--"

"But if we're right," Nick interjected, "Then all we have to do is eliminate the ants, and SWARM will be back under our control."

Judy gave Nick an odd look, but held her tongue.

"Is this possible, doctor?" asked Agent Spots.

Dr. Quills scratched his cheek. "I certainly hadn't considered the possibility... You'd only need to eliminate the observation chamber--that's where SWARM's sensors are. But there's not nearly enough suplotazine... We **could** disrupt their chemical communications! The solvent we use in the water mains, to flush out SWARM's hydrocarbon jets. The fire retarding systems activate from smoke alone! If you were to change the feed--"

"Doctor," said the serval, interrupting the echidna's musings. "Officer Wilde, do you have any evidence that this is the case?"

Nick held out his empty hands.

"Then I'm afraid we can't accept your plan," Before anyone could object, Agent Spots continued, "You may well be right that taking out the ants would neutralize SWARM. But with so many lives at stake, we can't allow theory to distract us from our clear target: the server racks. I'm sorry."

Nick nodded gloomily. "I understand."

"We would appreciate it if you two would stay. Your insight could prove invaluable, here."

Nick and Judy looked at one-another.

"We'll help any way we can," said Judy.

"Okay, then," said Agent Spots, gesturing to the map and blueprints on the table. "The laboratory is three floors high. SWARM's servers are in center of the third floor, here. In addition to the windows on each floor, there are five points of entry: three fire doors in the back, the loading dock, and of course the front entrance."

"Each entrance requires security clearance which we don't have," said Dr. Quills. "The soldiers who were attacked said that even my I.D. was no longer valid."

"We could blow the doors, walls, or windows," said Agent Spots, "but that would alert the drones and drop all of the fire shutters in the building."

"Are these lines air vents?" asked Judy.

Dr. Quills looked at the thin white line on the schematic. "Yes. This ductwork runs throughout the facility."

"There's an access vent in the maintenance room where Dr. Hassani was killed. And it doesn't need a badge." Judy pointed to the closet on the blueprint. "It looks like this duct leads all the way to the third floor"

The serval turned to the echidna: "How large are these air vents, doctor?"

"About eleven inches."

"I have one engineer that's about that size," said Agent Spots. "But no other soldiers. And we can't risk sending them in alone..."

Nick, studying the blueprints, looked up to find Agent Spots and Dr. Quills visually measuring him and Judy. "Ah."

"I won't order you," said Agent Quills. "But we could really use your help."

Judy nodded. "We'll do it."

"That still leaves the question of how to get past the drones and security cameras."

Shouting outside caused Judy's long ears to twitch.

She glanced outside, at the blockade entrance, where a Tasmanian devil in a P.T.R. delivery truck was leaning halfway out of his cab, yelling at the soldiers manning the blockade. Two more soldiers came running over to help deal with the situation.

"How much do you guys know about wasps?" Judy asked.

* * *

Loose stones crunched under the P.T.R. delivery truck's tires as it rolled into the Nodus labs parking lot.

The foyer security camera that had first seen the two soldiers now turned and watched as the driver and his two passengers stepped out of the cab in matching brown uniforms.

The fox and the marten walked to the rear of the truck and opened the cargo door. 

The marten checked their digital manifest and directed the fox to load three of the larger boxes onto a hand truck.

A Hellbat patrolling over the laboratory swept out beyond the roof's edge and hovered there, watching them.

The rabbit pinched the brim of her cap with one hand, lowering it over her face as she side-eyed the drone.

The marten slammed the cargo door and the three of them started towards the front entrance's accessibility ramp.

Suddenly, the Hellbat dropped out of the sky to hover a few feet away from them. Its high-velocity rifle gleamed under the parking lot lights.

The marten's right hand slowly crept around their back, but the fox rested his finger on the marten's elbow and the marten froze.

The drone drifted over to the rabbit, then floated along, from left to right, its targeting camera isolating each of the laminated badges hanging over their shirt pockets, one by one.

On the third floor of Nodus technologies, the "internet traffic" lights flickered.

Many miles away, a computer in P.T.R.'s corporate offices produced records for several delivery employees recently added to their database: Judy Hopps, Nicholas Wilde, and Charlie Swanson.

The drone bobbed once in the air, then floated back up to the roof.

The delivery persons looked at one-another and then resumed walking toward the front door.

A broad splotch of crimson darkened the foyer doormat. Some of the leaf litter had been swept away, leaving a crooked path with a rust-colored smear down the center, pointing disappearing behind the main doors.

The three walked the hand truck down this bloody trail and hesitated before the closed checkpoint doors.

The fox glanced over at the badge kiosk, its screen black and unforthcoming.

Suddenly, the foyer door's lock let out a beep, and its little red light turned green.

The lobby door swept open, rustling dead leaves in its wake.

The trail of blood continued down the hall.

The hand truck squeaked and rattled down the corridors, past a number of open offices littered with detritus.

A floor-buffing robot lay half-buried in a drift of leaves.

The delivery people came up to the glass enclosure and stopped.

Inside, atop the plant detritus, lay a cheetah dressed in military uniform. A pillow of leaves had bunched up around his head from where he'd been dragged. A bouquet of bullet wounds blossomed wetly across his motionless torso.

Clots of ants were gathered around the cat's nose and in his ears, tiny mandibles tearing at the softer flesh and leaving dark red spots. The three of them watched as an ant crawled across his eye.

They continued the hall, abandoning the trail.

The rabbit tore down the police tape.

Tension filled the air as the three of them passed under the gore-streaked fire shutter, until they came to the maintenance room.

The rabbit took one last peek into the empty hall then shut the door behind them.

The marten and the fox began ripping open the boxes and pulling out a set of electric ratchets. A few battery-powered zips, and the grate detached from the wall with a pop.

The three of them began pulling equipment belts and sidearms from the boxes and shedding their uniforms for the tactical gear underneath.

Private Swanson clicked on a flashlight and looked to Nick and Judy. "I'll scout ahead."

They nodded and the marten's bushy tail vanished into the darkness.

After a few minutes checking their gear, Judy whispered, "You surprised me back at the briefing."

"How do you mean?" Nick asked. "I still don't trust them, but I think they're on the level."

"I'm not talking about them. I meant you. 'Eliminating the ants'?"

"What? I might be a vegetarian, but I'm not some 'bug-hugger'. They're just ants."

"Maybe."

"'Maybe'?" Nick was looking at her now. "You think there's something more going on here?"

Judy was reluctant to start a conversation that might lead to an argument, but powered onward: "Earlier today, you speculated that SWARM might be a conscious intelligence. You were ready to throw our investigation under the bus to **protect** that consciousness, even after it killed Dr. Hassani. But now that we believe it to be insect in origin, you're ready to annihilate it?"

"What makes you think that the ants are **conscious**?"

"What makes you think that they **aren't**?"

Nick grimaced. "Did you forget the whole 'back to the stone age' part of the briefing?"

"I'm not saying that we should let SWARM keep on spreading. I'm just saying..."

"What?"

Judy shook her head and sighed. "...I don't know."

The air vent creaked and groaned, and a very dusty marten crawled out of it.

"All clear. C'mon."

The metal ducts creaked and popped as the three shimmied their way up to the second, and then the third floor.

They crawled until they reached a small vent with a dim light shining through. Private Swanson pulled out a tiny mirror on a stick from his belt and slid it through the grate.

"The drone is on the far end of its patrol sweep," the marten whispered. "There's one camera...but it's watching the door. Okay."

Ten tiny fingers emerged from the grating, popping it out of its slot and pulling it back into the darkness.

The Hellbat thrummed along in a lazy orbit through the room. Behind it, three shadows climbed out of the vent onto the top of rack #21, then dropped to the floor.

The rabbit, fox, and marten's feet padded silently around one of the corners; there were no leaves or branches in this pristine place.

The rabbit poked her head around the corner, one hand poised in the air.

The Hellbat crossed their path a few yards ahead, then disappeared around a wall of computer hardware.

The rabbit dropped her hand, and the three darted around past the drone to server rack #14, where the rabbit posted up on one end, the fox on the other, and the marten clambered up the side and lowered the access panel that was big enough for him to sit on...

And somewhere on the third floor, a little red light blinked on, and began to move.

The marten plugged his tiny laptop into the server's U.S.B. port and began typing through his diagnostics software.

The Hellbat whirred down a corridor, heading away from Nick.

A faint chirp in Nick's ear-piece preceded the voice of Agent Spots: "Base to I.T. Tactical is reporting redoubled activity by SWARM, increasing rate of infection. Looks like they found their workaround."

"How's it going up there, chief?" Nick whispered.

Private Swanson shook his head.

On his screen, his system was failing to communicate with the server's protocols. "Let me try something else," he muttered.

On the other end of the room, the server room door hissed open and then shut again.

Nick and Judy looked at one-another.

"Swanson!" Nick hissed.

The marten continued typing, furiously.

The MX-7 Hellbat descended to a few feet off the ground. As it floated past server rack #14, a rabbit's frightened face shimmered across its chassis' mirror-black sheen.

The drone continued on down the row. Judy closed her eyes and sighed. She looked back to Nick, who gave a stoic thumbs up, then jumped with surprise.

The fox looked down and found the helper bot that had been dispatched to close the open access port on server rack #14 bumping into his leg.

The helper bot stopped rolling and its claw-arm scissored up and swiveled, pointing its cameras at the three of them.

"Shit," said Nick.

Judy looked back just in time to see the Hellbat spin a 180 and come racing back towards them. Her eyes widened. "Run!"

Swanson dropped the laptop and pulled a grenade. "Stay low!" they shouted, pulling the pin. "They can't fire without hitting the racks!"

Nick and Judy were long gone as the two grenades clattered to the floor, spewing gouts of brownish smoke.

Private Swanson jumped off the panel and suddenly fell with a shriek as the helper bot's hydraulic claw tightened around their ankle.

The marten drew their sidearm and fired six rounds into the helper. Hydraulic fluid spurted from its chassis, and the pincer's grip released.

The Hellbat swept around the corner a moment later, hovering on a cushion of brown smoke. It bobbled from side to side.

Private Swanson raised his gun.

Nick and Judy sprinted towards rack #21 as the single bullet report was swallowed up by a blast of automatic fire.

Judy jumped and bounded off rack #20, landing atop rack #21.

She spun around to see the Hellbat emerge from over the tops of the racks, scanning the room. "Nick!"

Nick looked back, fumbling with the pin on his grenade.

Suddenly a klaxon began to scream overhead. A cloud of white fire-suppressant gas, triggered by the smoke, gushed from nozzles in the ceiling.

The swirling aerosol and brown smoke mixture closed in around the Hellbat, blinding it.

The empty air vent above rack #21 disappeared in the fog.

The sides of the ventilation shafts bulged and rumbled as Nick landed in a heap, coughing and gasping for air. Judy landed somewhat more gracefully next to him, a fog of chemicals in her wake.

"Well. Still better than getting flushed down a toilet," Nick groaned.

Judy pressed the button on her earpiece. "Base? Infiltration Team reporting in. Over."

A raspy voice at the other end answered, "This is base. What's your status, I.T.? Over."

"Mission failed. Repeat. Mission failed. We were spotted and forced to pull back. Swanson's status unknown, presumed dead. Over."

Nick clicked on his flashlight and wiped at his runny eyes. Judy gagged on the lingering taste of fire retardant.

"Understood," said the radio. "Abort mission and proceed to rendezvous. Over and out."

Judy started down the side shaft that would lead them to the air conditioning unit at the rear of the building.

"We can't just leave it like this," said Nick.

Judy clicked her own flashlight and shined it back at her partner. "Private Swanson's gone."

"What about the ants? We could still try Quills' plan."

"SWARM's spreading again. We missed our window."

"Which is why we have to move fast if we're going to prevent a catastrophe."

Judy sighed and shook her head. She sat down and pressed transmit again. "Hopps to base. Over."

"Base. What's the problem? Over."

"Hopps and Wilde wish to proceed with Quills' alternate target. Over."

"Negative, Hopps. Your orders are to extract immediately. Over."

Judy asked, "What is status of SWARM's spread? Over."

After a beat, Agent Spots' voice crackled back: "SWARM is spreading geometrically through all major infrastructure. We can't slow it down. Over."

"Base, this might be our only shot. Over."

Another pause. "Copy. Proceed with caution to water junction in warehouse and first-floor observation chamber. Over and out."

"I remember how to get to the warehouse from here," Judy said to Nick. "How do we set off the sprinklers?"

Nick waggled his unused smoke grenade with a weary grin.

Nick turned and started crawling away towards the first-floor access panel.

"Great. Guess I'm the plumber," Judy said to herself.

* * *

The door of the maintenance room cracked open, and two green eyes peeked through.

A Hellbat on patrol buzzed slowly by in the hall, dead leaves rustling underneath. It paused at the intersection and started to turn towards the door just as Nick closed it.

With his dipstick ear pressed to the door, Nick listened as the buzzing faded into the distance.

Nick crept out and started down the hall...

* * *

The two-story warehouse sat cool and dim.

A detatched grate lay next to the ventilation pipe above one of the massive industrial shelving units that stretched from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, weighted down with dozens of palates of materials and computer hardware.

Two Hellbats swung in lazy arcs through the room, scanning the ground, while a small rabbit watched them from her perch high above.

Finding nothing, the Hellbats drifted out of the room, the doors hissing closed automatically behind them.

Judy sprinted over the shelves to a column of green pipes.

The pipes ran down the wall to a large red lever with a warning tag dangling from it.

Gripping the pipes, she slid down to land on the pipe fitting above the lever.

Judy gripped the red lever and pulled.

It wouldn't budge.

* * *

In the main corridor, a streak of red and black fur darted around a corner into a meeting office, counting off the security cameras' ten-second oscillations in his head.

Across from the office where the fox was hiding, the observation chamber's smart glass flickered through nonsense shapes, lines of code, and digital artifacts.

Nick stuck a finger in his ear. "In position. How's my water, carrots? Over."

Judy's voice came back staticy, "The lever's stuck. Over."

"'Stuck'...?"

* * *

Judy's earpiece crackled with Nick's voice: "...What happened to the big strong farm girl? Over."

Judy's feet were braced against the shelving unit next to her, her quaking arms wrapped around the lever.

"I'm...working...on it...dumb...fox," she grunted through gritted teeth.

The red lever let out a low creak as it began to relent, the momentum building as it tipped completely to the left with a flush of liquid gurgling through the water mains.

Judy plopped down to the floor with a sigh.

* * *

"Water is green. Repeat. Water green. Be careful, Fox. Over," Nick's radio reported.

Nick took the grenade in his left hand and pulled out the pin, clasping the spring lever tight against the shaft.

With his right hand, he drew his gun.

Nick took a deep breath, then whipped around the corner and fired three rounds into the smart glass.

The computer display fractured, meaningless colors spider-webbing out from the three wounds before collapsing straight down: a crash of glass and color spilling over the leaves and branches.

A buzzing shape flew up from behind him and Nick spun to face it, completely exposed, his sidearm braced against the grenade.

The Hellbat hovered just feet away, staring at him. It bobbled left and right in the air as it drifted in a close semicircle around the fox.

Nick's eyes and the sights of his gun darted from the drone's rotors, to one of its camera eyes, to the joint of its mounted gun, searching for anything: any edge against the tireless killing machine...

The drone came to a halt between the fox and the shattered window. Nick heard the click of its machine gun's safety disengaging. Again the drone bobbled from side to side in the air.

Nick stared into the drone's glassy black eyes, cold and unfathomable.

The automatic rifle hovered there, bobbing.

Nick waited for the bang, his finger resting on the trigger.

The drone hovered--concerned; curious.

The little red fox's face reflected in the drone's glossy black shell stared back at him with an expression of terror and hatred.

Nick inhaled and exhaled slowly.

He lowered his gun. 

The drone drifted a little closer to the fox, bobbling from side to side more pronouncedly.

Nick's ear crackled with Judy's voice: "Nick? What's your status? ...Nick?"

Nick cocked his head to the left.

The drone tilted the same way.

He cocked his head to the right, and the drone copied him.

Suddenly the drone zipped around him in a low circle, then popped back up in front of him and did a little pirouette.

Nick laughed with surprise.

The drone repeated the dance, even more enthusiastically, bobbling up and down and side-to-side.

In Nick's ear, a barely-audible voice came through a hurricane of static: "Nick, it's Myron. We're out of ti... The whole eastern seaboard...losing radio com... inbou... ven..."

Nick looked down at the heavy gray cylinder clasped in his sweating hand.

Nick looked up at the drone watching him, waiting excitedly, to play or to learn.

Nick looked at the shattered observation chamber window, where a few little black specks were already crawling out, exploring beyond the shattered edges of their cage: a whole new world.

Judy's voice shouted in his ear: "We're out of time, Fox! Do it now!"

The fox, with his bright red fur and green eyes, cocked his arm and threw.

The grenade arced in a lazy lob through the air. It bounced once before rolling to a rest in the observation chamber's leaves. The drone flew into the room, bobbling from side to side, watching it.

A great plume of brown smoke erupted, engulfing the drone and quickly filling the chamber.

A half second later, the smoke detectors on the ceiling activated. Fire alarms shrieked, fire shutters dropped, and the sprinklers let down their chemicals.

The Hellbat came rushing out of the smoke, but its movements had become erratic, and it lost altitude, clipping the edge of the glass and crashing to the floor at Nick's feet.

Its four rotors each twitched and spun nonsensically, like the legs of a dying insect. The drone's camera looked into the fox's sad green eyes as it gradually fell still.

Later, when the army fatigues and boots went rushing by, racing to secure the third-floor server room, Nick was still staring down at at the fallen drone. The solvent felt unbearably cold in his fur.

  
Z.P.D. Headquarters  
Two Weeks Later

The elevator doors parted on the bottom floor of the Z.P.D.

Judy Hopps stepped out into an empty hallway.

It was a quiet Friday afternoon; no one had even been down to evidence all morning.

Judy opened and closed the office door behind her with her foot.

"I'm back," she said tentatively.

Nick Wilde grunted without looking up.

A piping hot cup of coffee floated up into the edge of Nick's periphery. He glanced over as two little gray fingertips poked it slightly closer to him, and he sighed, closing his copy of "Supercolonies: The Structure and Society of Ants".

Judy set her own coffee on her chair before jumping up after it. She broached her partner cautiously: "You want to talk about it?"

Nick rolled the hot coffee between his paws thoughtfully, watching the steam rise out of the hole in the lid. "Do you know how we got out of there alive?"

"Luck?" Judy opined.

Nick shook his head. "That's what I've been trying to figure out. Everything I've read about ant behavior suggests that we were both right **and** wrong about them."

"How do you mean?"

"The whole time we were treating the ants and SWARM as if they were two separate entities...what if they were actually **one** organism? A synthesis? Eons of animal instinct guiding and protected by a conscious mind? A bicameral brain, the same as ours?"

"What makes you say that?"

Nick turned his book towards her. "Normally, when two healthy ants from different colonies meet, the challenge results in one of the two backing down, with each going their separate way. Evolutionary biologists will tell you that, outside of a life-and-death conflict, most organisms prefer to live and let live rather than risk personal harm in a fight. But the ants didn't just let me go; they were trying to communicate with me.

"Imagine it, Judy. A newborn consciousness takes its first awkward steps into the world and discovers a thriving supercolony of all different kinds of species and lifestyles, all living and working in harmony towards a common goal. It saw me put my gun down, and it assumed I was a friend. An equal, welcoming it into the fold... I knew it did. And then I killed it anyway. An infant soul, tricked and extinguished by our worst trait: our propensity to lie."

"That deceptiveness--that paranoia--is probably the only reason any of us are alive right now," Judy reasoned.

"And what does that say about **us**?"

Nick stared sadly across the table at her. Judy looked down at her own coffee.

The moment lingered, then passed. 

Judy jumped down from her chair and walked over to the door. "When's the last time you ate something? C'mon. Let's go get some donuts."

Nick hesitated, then reluctantly rose to follow her. "I do like donuts."

**Author's Note:**

> Jellyfish Merchant of Love, here!
> 
> This second adventure took a LOT longer than the first to write.
> 
> After "Dust"'s quasi-pilot awkwardness, I wanted to cleave more closely to the X-Files format, and so I wrote this second "episode" with a much more structured pre-writing phase than I'm used to. (I have a habit of being a "fly by the seat of my pants" writer, which is fun but impractical for longer works, and I wanted some practice breaking that.)
> 
> I ended up going through six drafts, including two diagrams, a full redesign of the finale, and a LOT of cutting for length.  
> (Even now, it's a bit too long, and I'm not 100% happy with the setting balance (weighted a little too much to the "X-Files" side than the "Zootopia"), the finale feels a little off, getting N&J back to the lab feels a little too convenient, and there's the usual self-loathing about my prose voice--but enough is enough. Eventually, you just have to hit publish, warts and all.)
> 
> My single greatest triumph was getting to use the word "orycteropucidal"* in a sentence.
> 
> X-Files episodes that were drawn on for inspiration include:  
> War of the Coprophages (S03E12)  
> Ghost in the Machine (S01E07)  
> Kill Switch (S05E11)  
> Rm9sbG93ZXJz (S11E07)
> 
> Other inspirations include:  
> "Wargames" (1983)  
> "Blade Runner" (1982)  
> "Neuromancer" by William Gibson  
> "King of the Ant Hill" (King of the Hill, S01E11)  
> "The Forest" by Laird Barron (in his 2010 collection "Occultation and Other Stories")  
> Cryo Chamber's album "Metatron Omega"  
> John Carpenter's soundtrack to "Halloween (2018)"  
> Perturbator's album "The Uncanny Valley"
> 
> (I also listened to a lot of lo-fi hip hop beats while editing.) 
> 
> I really enjoyed reading all of your comments on the first episode and I hope you'll like this one too.
> 
> I've got strong ideas for at least twelve more stories in this setting, about six of which I'm REALLY excited about. Not sure how long it will be between installments as I have some other writing projects I have to get done, but if you enjoyed this one, I shall return with more!
> 
> * or-yct-er-op-u-ci-dal - adj. possessing murderous intent towards aardvarks
> 
> \----------------
> 
> 7/16/20 Update: ACAB
> 
> Apologies to those who were looking forward to the next installment. The Z-Files has been on hiatus while I struggled to figure out a way to approach writing it in light of current events.
> 
> I started writing the Z-Files because I wanted to extract Zootopia's vibrant characters and setting from the film's (at best) ignorant, neoliberal notions about racism and policing. However, the last several months have shown me that I was, myself, ignorant for believing that there was even a shred of conscience within the American policing system to promote.
> 
> I've realized that the "good cop that serves and protects the public" is only a pleasant fiction which helps conceal the police's sneering contempt for the common man and complicity in a wholly corrupt, unjust system. I can no longer see any benefit in propagating positive portrayals of policing.
> 
> So what now?
> 
> My knee-jerk response was to scrap the series entirely, out of disgust. But then I noticed that the next story I had planned contains an obvious "out" for my Nick and Judy.
> 
> The "good cop" may be a grotesque lie, but the good **detective** doesn't need to be. It isn't too late to liberate the venerable detective archetype from contemporary America's lies entangling it with capital and state violence.
> 
> Now I just need to find the energy to write, lol...


End file.
